‘Reproduction mobility’ and motherhood construction: Chinese education migrants in Chiang Mai

‘Reproduction mobility’ adopted in this article indicates a rising trend of social reproduction mobility serving the purpose of maintaining an alternative life that many middle‐class Chinese parents, mostly mothers, are taking their children out of the hyper‐competitive domestic education arena in m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGlobal networks (Oxford) Vol. 23; no. 2; pp. 494 - 507
Main Authors Jiangyu, Li, Sisi, Guo, Siriphon, Aranya
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.04.2023
Subjects
Alternative approaches
Brokerage
Chinese migrants
Computation
Developing countries
Education
education mobility
Families & family life
International schools
LDCs
Markets
Migrants
Mobility
motherhood
Mothers
Neoliberalism
Popular education
reproduction
Schools
Social reproduction
Thailand
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Summary:‘Reproduction mobility’ adopted in this article indicates a rising trend of social reproduction mobility serving the purpose of maintaining an alternative life that many middle‐class Chinese parents, mostly mothers, are taking their children out of the hyper‐competitive domestic education arena in mainland China to attend international schools in Chiang Mai. This escape implies macro‐level changes in the global education market on two fronts: Chinese national education is enveloping families into a national education competition from which they cannot withdraw; meanwhile, Thailand's international education market is being industrialized as part of the neoliberal marketization of international education in less developed countries. This paper analyses the calculation, evaluation and agentive selection of Chinese families as they pursue an increasingly popular education project of reproduction mobility. It identifies different modes of mothering that are similar to the domestic phenomenon of ‘mothering brokerage’ but practised in the international education environment of Southeast Asia.
Bibliography:This article forms a part of a broader project on “New Transnational Chinese Migrants in the Era of Globalization” which focus on the mobility of new generation of transnational Chinese migrants in Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia. While this paper scrutinize the local practice of mobility reproduction, another article within this project is forthcoming in a migration studies journal that addresses the theoretical issue of the national‐transnational‐circular migration in a time of (de‐)globalization.
ISSN:1470-2266
1471-0374
DOI:10.1111/glob.12409